Monday, May 18, 2009

Thankfully, the song contest of Eurovision is over. It's a 'contest' that's supposed to bring the Europeans together. When I lived in Europe, I could not stand to watch the thing for more than a few minutes; I've never been a big fan of pop music like that.

The latest twist is the inclusion of the former Eastern block countries. Since these countries have unresolved issues and are new to Europe, they get their knickers twisted in the wind. So their entries are very political. Instead of following the goal of 'bringing Europe together', they use the contest as another channel to air their grievances. This year the Georgian entry was banned because the song itself was anti-Russian. The rest of the songs were not so explicitly anti-something so they passed the censorship.

Apparently, though, there was still some controversy. The Armenian blogosphere on LiveJournal is in uproar. I don't know what happened but there must have been something that displeased the people in Armenia.

16 comments:

In one or two sentences chem kara lolWe had "Menq enq, mer sarer'" (Papik u Tatik) monument pic in our video reel before our entry which was removed after the semifinal by Azeri demand. In retaliation Sirisho who was reading out results from Armenia kept on looking into the clipboard which she lifted up to make sure everyone could see our Papik and Tatik on its back...also they Papik and Tatik at the background, behid Sirusho...Suprisingly NOT while Azeris were complaining abt us they had Iranian pic in their promo video...

In one sentence: it was a classic primitivism. If it was produced by ALM TV I would understand but it was done by Armenian Public TV which I assumed had to align its policies with Foreign Ministry. I can only hope that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was not behind that idiocy. The other thing was the 1 point vote to Azerbaijan given by Armenia (by the way 4 points went to Turkey) I am still unsure from where it came from. Was it another MFA ingenuity or did it really come from voters? If the 2nd I guess one of them would be Sashik Sargsyan (Serj's brother) who is known by his extreme fondness of Maugham music. The Azerisong wasnt something special to gain votes.

In general the song quality was better this year and the winning entry really deserved it. This doesnt mean that the whole event is not a big joke.

Well, there is nothing wrong with giving points to the Turkish or Azeri entries if the songs are good. After all, this is a singing contest, not a political warfare (even if some interest groups treat it that way).

So, does Papik and Tatik symbolize Armenia now, or was it a [failed]attempt to piss off the Azeris?

Yeah if the song was in quality it would deserve votes no doubts but as I said above it was nothing special. The Tatik & Papik was a ridicules effort to as if piss off Azeris. I am still not sure to be sarcastic and laugh or to be ashamed that something like that would come out of Armenia. If it was done for taking piss I would understand but these guys were very serious. I guess they couldn’t sleep from excitement all the week 

The next example was the clip Always by AySel & Arash presented by Azerbaijan. In decorations and haircut of the actress, who presented Azerbaijan, the image-makers from Baku used images of Poets Mausoleum in Tabriz in Iran as an illustration of Azeri-Türk culture. The observers consider this to be a promotion of ideas of unification of Northern Azerbaijan (Baku) and Southern Azerbaijan (Tabriz).

Interestingly, the organizers of Eurovision 2009 allowed the Iran-related decorations used by Azerbaijan, although they did not allow Armenia to use a photo of the Armenian Grandmother and Grandfather monument just because it is on the territory of Nagorno Karabakh. Azerbaijan accepts that Grandmother and Grandfather is an Armenian monument, but did not allow Eurovision to display it because they argue it would be promotion of the Armenian approach to the Karabakh conflict. And in Azerbaijan the phone number to vote for Armenia was blocked, at all.

It all depends on who do you compete with. The lower the bar, the lower your performance is going to be. Competing with Zimbabwe or Azerbaijan can't move Armenia forward too much. But then you gotta be realistic as well on who you are when choosing a benchmark.

Pasting Papik u Tatik on the back of the clipboard was pretty juvenile. But Eurovision is, itself, pretty juvenile, and the music that comes out of it is just about the lamest on the planet.

Witness the guy from Norway who took #1. Was he a man, or was he an elf? Perhaps an Irish leprechaun living in exile in Norway. He looked like he was 14 and started off his song with, "When I was young, so many years ago..." I don't get it.

Or witness Arash, representing the male half of the Azerbaijani duo. Between his institutional buzz-cut, jacket stolen from a 19th century naval officer, white pants and boots, and Never-on-key singing style, it was obvious that he was either someone's cousin or Aysel's gay best friend, there for moral support.

Aysel, herself, looked like a plastic surgery disaster waiting to happen, what with those ass implants that looked like they'd been modeled after the Venus of Willendorf.

Actually, we did send complaint to ESC both because of Papik and Tatik and blocking votesin Azerbaijan. And in article it said " "Iran is notified" abt Azeris using their images...who notified is not mentioned...;-)

AF,The guy from Norway is originally from Balarus and before the ESC he visited Filipp Kirkorov (head of jury) in his house because of which FK reportedly resigned..motivating he is a good friend wit contestants-him and Sakis from greece...as if he remembered abt it only at the very last second lol

I cant believe some stupid hillbilly style song and sound played by a horrible norwigian singer is winner. this is obviously fixed like it was last year when PUTIN MUTIN had EV fixed so that it would go to moskva for 2009. well I hope maybe Sofi or Anahit or maybe Nune and Harut balyan can go into it for nice duet, but it seems duets dont win ev, must be singular singer. we need EV in Armenia, it will bring much european attention to us, our causes and hopefully attract much needed wealthy western euros to visit our Hayastan